The Journey So Far

A chronological stroll thru the history of Broadway Musicals as they came to be recorded by Hollywood--the summation of a lifelong vocation, and a journey of self discovery. Equal parts cultural history, critique and personal memoir. Comingnext: Jersey Boys

Sunday, May 18, 2014

Cabaret

February
13, 1972 ABC
123 minutes

The shocking thing about Cabaret forty years on, is how little remains "shocking"
about it. We've seen tenfold examples of decadence in the decades since; the
steady decay of taste, civility and morality that we've witnessed and endured--not
least on cable TV--make a coy bisexual romance, and a rising tide of anti-semitism
almost laughably tame in comparison. If Cabaret's
ribald cabaret songs portend a coming shit-storm, what does that say about our ever-more
boundary-less, narcissistic, bling-obsessed culture? But life is a Cabaret, old chum, so feast on the
That-Was-Then/This-Is-Now buffet of denial, and enjoy the show. Time has also
inevitably stolen the freshness of the movie. It's hard to see now how different
and exciting the film felt coming on the heels of so many recent elephantine
flops. Yet the historical narrative has decreed Cabaret both a Bway and movie musical landmark. For Harold Prince
it made him a revered director; for Kander & Ebb it taught them a lifelong
style: show-biz as metaphor; peppy tunes to comment on tough, often harsh
issues. It's their thang. For Lotte
Lenya it was one last sip from the Weimar
glass; for Joel Grey, Bway stardom. For Liza Minnelli, movie stardom; for Bob
Fosse, movie director stardom; for Joel, Bob & Liza--an Oscar each.

For Jill Haworth: career suicide. She must've had a good
agent, for she was first-billed on Bway (as Sally Bowles), followed by Jack
Gilford (as Herr Schultz), Bert Convy (Cliff) and then in smaller typeface
"and" Lotte Lenya; "with" (smaller typeface still) Joel
Grey. After the movie in the show's first Bway revival, Joel was top-billed, as
was Alan Cumming in the subsequent revisionist revival(s). But Haworth suffered a critical drubbing, not least from
Walter Kerr who called it a "stunning musical with one wild wrong
note": her. Thru-out his career Prince has been hit & miss with his
casting, and apparently this was something of a strikeout--tho Jill stayed with
the show for two years, succeeded by Penny Fuller, then Anita Gillette--who
flared brightly in '61, subbing for the striking/vacationing Anna Maria
Alberghetti in Carnival! and earning
rapturous reviews. She was quickly snapped up by Joshua Logan for All American (a quick flop) and before
she could catch her breath signed for the Irving Berlin comeback, Mr. President. After she survived the
one-night flop of Kelly, she was happy
to join a hit musical, even two years into the run. A shame she couldn't have
opened in it and earned that one big role to call her own. Who was Haworth anyway? Another protege of Otto Preminger's--she
was 15 when he cast her in Exodus,
followed by The Cardinal and In Harm's Way (films that have carried
no rep into history to match their initial self-importance)--Prince saw
something he could mold in her; but eventually even he came to disparage her
performance. Surely Kander & Ebb were pushing for Liza Minnelli--who had
just won a Tony in their first musical, Flora,
the Red Menace (which Prince also produced, but did not direct. Abbott did,
and it was where they parted ways for good) and she was in the final running. She certainly
came out on top later (was anyone else even considered for the movie?); the
role tailored even more to her talents, putting her signature forever on the
character.

Like Holly Golightly and Mame Dennis, the very name Sally
Bowles conjures up a frisson of fairy-tale eccentricity; fantasy women as
imagined by gay men. Isherwood's Sally was British, but starting with Julie
Harris in the first stage (and film) incarnation, I Am a Camera, she's been played by Yanks. London's
Cabaret dared a real Brit: Judi Dench
(years before America
knew her), who by all accounts was brilliant. Following that Anglo train of
thought, I came up with an utterly bonkers casting fantasy: Julie Andrews. Oh,
I can see you smirk. But think of it--what an image-breaker! A return to Bway
in '66 instead of making Torn Curtain
and Hawaii, could've been an exciting career
move--and she could've pulled it off. But of course Sally was destined to land
in Liza's ready, willing & able hands. In truth she might've been a bit
young for Bowles on Bway in '66. By '71--sadly, two years after Mama's
passing--she was as ripe as she was ever going to be. The confluence of talent,
fitness, receptivity and timing is how legends are made in show biz; and there
weren't many thereafter who didn't know who Liza!
was.

My last summer in Canoga Park, I talked my then best
friend, Larry Shevick, into getting season tickets for the LA Civic Light Opera;
which in '68 offered Cabaret, Mame, I Do! I Do! with Martin & Preston
(which for some reason we couldn't see) and a revived CLO operetta from 1942, Rosalinda--which bored me to tears. To
see Cabaret we took an hour and a
half bus ride--with a transfer in Van Nuys--to get to the Ahmanson in downtown
LA. The autumn before, I'd seen The Happy
Time (on its way to sadly flopping on Bway) in the brand new theater; a
vivid memory to this day. With Cabaret,
my one clear picture remains Ron Field's dazzling choreography for the
"Telephone Song." We were both blown away by the play, and I didn't
feel embarrassed for dragging my friend to musical theater--like I later would
with Mame. But even then, and from
the start, Cabaret always felt like
an imperfect show to me.

When you watch (as you can on YouTube) the first
nationally televised Tony Awards from 1967, you can see what a grand opening
number is "Willkommen"; racy, vivid, electric, and slightly menacing.
It goes a long way in perking up our interest--and remains one of the more
memorable opening numbers in Bway history. The song serves as entree to the
show, but also in context as floor show at the Kit Kat Klub. How many musicals have
songs presented as nightclub numbers? By no means is Cabaret the first show whose club songs have ironic resonance with
the story; but because their content skewed to the moral and political, the
show seemed revolutionary. Ethan Mordden calls it the "Essential '60s
musical." One that couldn't have happened earlier, and wasn't necessary
later. Its stature has certainly grown with time, and its gateway to the
genre's deconstruction is apparent. The show itself, tho, has also been changed
over succeeding productions--even more than Show
Boat. Harold Prince's direction was initially considered the show's primary
asset (even tho Ron Field's assertive choreography was what people remembered);
a staging template presumably part & parcel of all future revivals like
Robbins' Fiddler orChampion's Dolly! But that changed as soon as Fosse got his hands on it.

With the increasing failure rate of film musicals none of
the major studios were willing to take a risk on Cabaret--which, after all, dealt with Nazis, alter kockers and queers. Agent turned head of ABC pictures, Marty
Baum bought the film rights and offered Bway producers, Feuer & Martin their
chance in Hlwd. According to his memoir, Cy Feuer took the bulk of the reigns, under
many stipulations--given that he wasn't a fan of Joe Masteroff's original
libretto. He proudly takes credit for demanding no musical numbers be performed
outside a valid context (nightclub, beer garden, gramaphone); an early outlier
in denoucning film musicals for breaking-out-in-song style numbers. What worked
on stage, Feuer felt was wrong on screen. (Where'd he been the first 40 years
of sound movies?) This meant eight nightclub spots had to be staged in a tight
space; the main reason Feuer was determined to hire Bob Fosse--who after Sweet Charity was getting no bites for
more film work. But Feuer and Fosse both felt he'd learned a good deal from
that film's failure, and deserved a second chance. Cy went thru the motions of considering
other candidates like Billy Wilder and Gene Kelly, but in the end stuck by
Fosse--who repaid his loyalty by turning him into an enemy over a fight for a
cameraman. Bob wanted his Charity cinematographer,
Robert Surtees, but Feuer held firm over budget and hired Geoffrey Unsworth--to
no deficit whatsoever. He. too would win an Oscar. For budgetary reasons, as
well as a varnish of authenticity, Feuer lensed the pic entirely in Germany--in and around Munich,
which had a good deal more extant old structures than Berlin, and other cities of the north, many
of which had been obliterated by a chapter of history set later than the story.

My personal heretical view is that the score to Cabaret doesn't merit its exalted
status. Kander & Ebb's cabaret numbers have punch and verve, and some catchy,
if rinky-dinky, vamps. It's easy to tap along to "Two Ladies,"
"Don't Tell Mama" or either of "The Money Song"s. But most
of the I Am a Camera story-songs are
just average--not up to the standard measure of great musical scores. Kander
& Ebb won all the accolades that year, but I find Bock & Harnick's Apple Tree, Jones & Schmidt's I Do!, I Do!, and Styne, Comden &
Green's Hallelujah, Baby! far richer
in repeated listening than Cabaret.
Not to mention the rest of Bway '66: Coleman & Fields' Sweet Charity, Strouse & Adams' Superman and Jerry Herman's Mame.
Cabaret, like Kander & Ebb's first
Bway score, Flora, the Red Menace, is
wildly uneven--showing real promise but holding some duds. "Willkommen"
is a killer opening, I grant you, but nothing in the show tops it. What else is
great? "So What" has, especially in Lotte Lenya's recording, haunting echoes of Weill, but the show is
mostly Weill-lite. "Tomorrow Belongs to Me," manages to be
exquisitely beautiful and terrifying at once. It's everything the show wants to
be in one number--and ends the act with the same chill the pogram at Tzeitel's
wedding brought to Fiddler.

The rest, I say, is spinach. As a teen I was a sucker for
almost any big showtune, but try as I might I have never been seduced by
"Cabaret." Repeated listenings to "Married,"
"Meeskite," and The Pineapple Song fuel my negative assessment. "What
Would You Do?" sounds like the
eve of destruction; but Weill made the same point with arresting, not simply
dissonant melody. And I nominate "Why Should I Wake Up" as one of the
worst songs in a major musical in all the Golden Age. Those familiar only with
the Cabaret movie, will find most of
the titles above unfamiliar--because they were all cut. Ten songs from Bway
didn't make it into the screenplay. What other major, award-winning
genre-defining musical gutted it's acclaimed Bway score for the movie? And no one complained. I rest my case.
Kander & Ebb wrote three new songs for the movie (or more accurately, for
Liza) and they've become so iconic to the musical that stage productions have
now incorporated them.

Jay Allen's screenplay rewrote the book as well, swapping
the elder (Lenya-Jack Gilford) romance for the younger one, retrieving Fritz
& Natalia from John Van Druten's play, I
Am a Camera. Christopher Isherwood's stand-in, Cliff, becomes Brian in the
movie, and now discreetly if unashamedly gay--but pussy-friendly when it comes
to...well, Liza--a faggot magnet if ever there was one. This was bolder, at
any rate, than Prince's Bway version, which but hinted at
homosexuality--something Sam Mendes remedied with a trowel in his '96 Bway
revival--which itself was revived in 2014. But where the original musical
suggested an ensemble piece, the movie positions Sally, seen thru Brian's eyes,
as the central figure. With an American Sally, it was thought wise to change Yank
Cliff into British Brian. And Michael York, with his broad face and blonde
bangs, makes a good contrast to Liza's dark helmeted, heavily mascaraed guise.
He was a hunk of gay-bait at the time, what with this unapologetically queer
role, following another recent (tho rather obscure) pic, as a social climbing
charmer seducing his way into an Austrian castle in Something for Everyone, the film directing debut of Harold Prince
(which he followed up but once); a greatly under appreciated gem with a
glamorous Angela Lansbury performance among other treats. Come to think of it,
it might make a swell musical--But I digress. York makes a fine "camera" turned on 1931 Berlin;

Marisa Berenson conveys the
insecurity of her character convincingly; and Helmut Griem, as a playboy baron
is a honey of a teddy bear (with
the blondest moustache ever seen) who casts a genuine erotic charge to the suggested ménage a trois'. And as sole Bway
holdover, we have Joel Grey, as the ghoulish face of Weimar indifference--a vaudeville performance
I find bafflingly overrated. He's fine, but there's nothing beyond his act--not
a moment of interaction off stage as a human being with Sally, or anyone else.
The only reason I can think he won the Oscar is because voters had a hard time
choosing between James Caan, Robert Duvall and Al Pacino in The Godfather. Before the '71 Oscars
were even handed out in March of '72 it was already "known" what the next year's winner would be--such was
the tidal force of Godfather's impact;
only just opened and already deemed a landmark film--little else was given
chance to challenge it. But then few expected the impact of Cabaret either. After the movie's February
13th launch at the Ziegfeld Theater in New York (where it played until August),
Fosse took Liza back into the dance studio for 8 weeks of grueling rehearsals
for an NBC television special, with new material written by Kander & Ebb,
and Fosse working at the top of his game. The concert ("Liza with a
Z") shrewdly ended on a lengthy Cabaret
segment, with Liza reprising her now signature moves to a live audience in the
Lycreum theatre on May 31st. The rest of us saw it during TV season premiere
week on Sept 10th. Critics were beside themselves. By year's end, Liza and
Fosse were still fresh in media coverage and Cabaret scored big with the HlwdAcademy,
tying The Godfather for 10
nominations. The latter oddly seems to have been shortchanged: how they missed
Gordon Willis' rich cinematography or Nino Rota's memorable score is
incomprehensible. For Cabaret it was
the exclusion of "Maybe This Time" from the Best Song list--on the
grounds it was a trunk song--previously unused but not written specifically for
the movie. To quote, Fred Ebb, so what? (When was the last time you heard nominees,
"Ben"--from that flick about killer rats--"Marmalade, Molasses
& Honey" by the Bergmans & Maurice Jarre, or Sammy Fain's
"Strange Are the Ways of Love"?) On Oscar night Cabaret took an early sweep of awards, culminating in the shock of
Fosse winning over Coppola. By night's end it loomed possible to win Best Pic
as well, but Godfather prevailed--tho
in total winning only three Oscars to Cabaret's
stunning eight. It would be three
decades before another Bway musical received a Best Picture nomination--and
remarkably, for another work by Fosse, Kander & Ebb--whose Chicago
resulted directly from their smooth collaboration on Cabaret.

Fosse begins the film with a nod to Prince's staging: a mirror
reflecting the audience, only this mirror is severely warped and reflects a
'30s tableaux vivant modeled on drawings
by George Grosz. From the start the editing is striking, the quick cuts lend excitement
and heighten movement; but extend beyond the scope of the number as well--simultaneously
showing bits of Brian's arrival in Berlin.
Nonlinear scenes are intercut. It's a technique Fosse will use again and again,
thruout his films. He also throws in peripheral moments, casually, beginning
with the club owner tossing out a soliciting Nazi. Later we see the owner
brutally beaten (to death?) and other roadside attractions of violence that are
casually dispensed to suggest the mounting danger, while still keeping our
focus--as it must be for our main characters--tightly on their own personal
concerns. Liza--er, Sally is barely featured in "Wilkommen,:" just
part of the ensemble, but she makes an entrance nonetheless when answering the
door to Michael York, flashing green nails as badge of her "decadence."
Is it because of age that I now view this woman with far less enchantment than
I did as a youth? Now she seems transparently needy, desperate and deeply
insecure; or does it just seem that way because of how Liza comes across? But
put her in a number and she's the ultimate pro. It's hard to fathom just what
level of repute the Kit Kat is kicking. Let's face it, this floor show, for all
its crudeness looks mighty sophisticated--if not for the lighting cues alone.
Supposedly a singer in a dive bar, Liza's Sally lays out iconic tracks
screaming for career definition. That she got. And an Oscar to seal the deal.

The musical's evolution in concept from Isherwood's stories
and Van Druten's play was slow in coming 'round to using the club songs for
social and narrative commentary. Once they hit upon it, tho, this became the
show's defining feature--which the movie took to its ultimate conclusion:
dropping all the show's songs except for
club numbers. Purists will argue that four of the ten cut songs are heard as
instrumental recordings on gramaphone or the radio; and "Married"
gets a German vocal as well--but these are all background scoring. Fosse knew
he wouldn't get another chance if he failed to deliver, and with Gwen Verdon at
his side to assist, he pulled out every trick in his book.

"Mein
Herr" is "Big Spender" by way of The Blue Angel. Yet contemporary in feel as well. "Money,
Money" replaced Bway's "Sitting Pretty" (better known as
"The Money Song") to goose up the avarice in a music-hall turn. No
credit for stage lighting is to be found but Fosse worked with such lamp
magicians as Jules Fisher--whose influence was enuf to be noted here. Liza's
two big solos, "Maybe This Time," and the title song are saturated in
back light. Effective yes, but a bit above the pay grade of this club. But then
Fosse, as he later made clear in All That
Jazz, is all about Show Biz. Yet the most effective number in the picture
is easily the pastoral edelweiss of "Tomorrow Belongs to Me." It's
first heard in a short verse on a scratchy record. But later a fresh-faced boy
tenor begins seranading a beer garden, only to be joined by one after another
radiant face--each as down-home and innocent as your favorite relative--all the
more chilling for being the very folk who will rise with the tide of facism
into the hell of Germany's future. It's as sly a visual manuever as the tune is
hauntingly beautiful.

There isn't much to liven up the secondary romance between
Berenson's wealthy Jewess and her closeted-Jew suitor--especially with
hindsight to see where this will end up. But coy is not the word for the
central threesome--oblique is. It looks all fun & games, the trio twirling
in Bavarian fields one moment, a silent car trip (the two men alone) and a
read-between-the-lines goodbye the next. Only the lines are barely readable to start
with. "Screw Max" barks Brian to Sally. "I do," she admits.
Smiling, Brian replies: "So do I." This, too, is meant to be another
manifestation of the festering "decadence." Promiscuity that leads to
pregnancy and abortion--the whole Book of Slut, as prelude to the rise of
facism. Max runs away to Argentina,
Sally aborts and Cliff goes home, disgusted. Liza--er, Sally gets her eleven
o'clock manifesto aria, and Joel Grey gets to creep us out to wrap it quickly
up.

Here's the first movie musical in which the end credits roll in silence. The
pic barely crested two hours, and contained its musical numbers as contextual
entertainments. It was greatly enhanced in editing (yet another Oscar), giving
it a contemporary sheen. Here was an antidote to the bloated Roadshow fatigue. ABC
released the film in exclusive venues, but avoided the Roadshow format. The
critics and public ate it up. The movie ultimately grossed $20,175,000 in film
rentals. Enuf to make Hlwd reassess (briefly) its recent turnaround on
musicals. Closer to home, Cabaret was
cool enuf that all my hippie college friends would be inclined to go see it,
unlike they would say, Hello, Dolly!
or Sweet Charity. Cinematic decadence
was quite fashionable in the early '70s--even porn became culture's darling
with such fare as Deep Throat and Behind the Green Door. But after three
transitional years of dark, deliberately raw and often unpleasant movies 1972
brought signs of an uplift in Hlwd. The
Godfather was all it was cracked up to be; Hitchcock recovered with Frenzy, a masterful brightly-coloured
London thriller; Deliverance was an exciting
outdoor adventure like no other; and the under-appreciated What's Up Doc?--to my mind one of the funniest comedies ever made
(with priceless performances from Madeline Kahn and Mabel Albertson)--was
filmed in San Francisco, with one of the greatest slapstick chases since Harold
Lloyd. But my moviegoing was still just an occasional indulgence, not yet a regular
habit.

Since my first trip to New York, after Baba bought me my
own 12" portable TV to take back to California, I'd been gorging on the
Late Show in my bedroom (no more sneaking into the family room late at night) boning
up on my film education, seeing classics like Double Indemnity, Citizen Kane, Grand Illusion, Keaton's The General, Foreign Correspondent, the Marx Bros, Mae West, The Blue Angel, Meet Me in St. Louis, all
for the first time. Typically, I watched 27 movies in January of '72. 26 more
in February. In March I had fallen to 9 (including Cabaret), and by May I saw but one. This shows the trajectory of my
social life that spring, as I buried myself in DeAnza's theatre dept. and the
numerous friendships it reaped. The spring show was Orpheus Descending, a Tennesse Williams play with a large cast that
incorporated us all. Forty-something Judith B. was back for another turn as stage
diva; on- and off-stage hitting on the younger biker hippie playing the hero,
Val. No, not me--my namesake was a role far beyond my ability or desire; I was
Dog Hamma, redneck husband to shrewish wife, Dolly (played by Micky Martin). We
mostly sat backstage--while Judith B. emoted, or Helen Maciaznek curated her Girl
from Mars performance as Carol Cutrere--until those few scenes when we'd run on
for three pages and overact like crazy. The cast parties were phenomenal and in
retrospect, painfully youthful. Sex, Drugs and Rock 'n' Roll were all present,
tho not for me. Yet with some wine or vodka I was as high in spirit as the best
of them. Aside from the quarterly productions in which we built sets and ran
techs as well as rehearsed, our time was spent in classes. Ellis taught acting
and some tech, but the department's sole other teacher--and my first true mentor,
Mike Holler was a 27 year old bearded hipster--short & slim and reeking of
charisma. He opened our eyes to Artuad, Beckett, Joseph Chaikin, and the
limitlessness of our imaginations. Radical stuff to someone whose entire
knowledge of theater was "Broadway!" Which didn't mean I was any too
quick to forget my original love. I would soon find ways to use everything I
knew.

Come June I was back at Baba's in New York for my third summer residency--with
Bill again in tow for several weeks. He left early that year over some quarrel
we had that neither now remembers. Micky Martin came for a few days in August
and with her gusty laugh propelled Tom Stoppard's off-Bway play, The Real Inspector Hound and its
curtain-riser, After Magritte, into
one of my most fondly remembered theatre experiences. On July 2nd, Fiddler on the Roof ended its record Bway
run (with the movie Roadshow still going strong). Just the night before, Hair and Follies both closed--bringing a sudden end to the last Golden Age
musicals on Bway. I was too young and enthusiastic yet to notice a new--much
lesser--age had begun. But, tellingly, the shows I saw that summer weren't so
memorable. As I had plotted my own Some
Like it Hot musical since I was 14, I raced first to Sugar--which hadn't exactly set Bway on fire. The ingredients were
all there: Jule Styne, Bob Merrill, Gower Champion, David Merrick--even Robert
Morse & Tony Roberts felt recognizably right. And it wasn't bad. But it
wasn't the great musical it was supposed to be. Two Gentlemen of Verona was fun, but I had yet to get into the
score--that would happen much later. Phil Silvers was stellar, but the revival
of A Funny Thing Happened wasn't zany
enuf by half. And I can't say I enjoyed Jesus
Christ Superstar, Godspell, Al
Carmines' Joan, or Don't Play Us Cheap--and Ain't Supposed to Die a Natural Death just
plain scared me. And even with my recent "discovery" of '50s rock, Grease was so slight I could get no
purchase on it. (Yet, in what was surely a sign of the coming times, this is the show that would surpass Fiddler as Bway's longest run--at least until
A Chorus Line smashed that record.) Sadly,
the Bway of '72 was nothing like the Bway of '62 which ignited the imagination
of this nine-year-old, and set a template that would be extinct by the time I
was ready to join the club. So much had changed, especially the huge drop in
prestige and cultural relevance. None of this deterred my determination to move
to New York
as soon as I could. It would be sooner than I thought.

As for Cabaret,
after 40 years and seven viewings, it's earned my respect, but not my love.

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About this Blog

At the intersection of Broadway and Hollywood,

the Musical has been my lifelong touchstone. How did this happen? What does it mean? Herewith an analysis of my own"glass menagerie;" a Proustian trail of memory and perhaps a final summation of my thoughts and feelings on this unrelenting vocation.

About Me

A man on the verge of a musical breakdown. Why did I do it? What did it get me? Scrapbooks full of me in the background: New York, Hollywood, San Francisco. Palm Springs. This time, boys, I'm takin' the bows.